BROKERAGES FACE FLOOD OF ORDERS

The phones starting ringing at 7:30 a.m. Thursday at the brokerage offices of Bachus & Stratton in Pompano Beach. But that didn't surprise the brokers who had been up all night executing commodities and bond trades.

"Anticipation is rumor, war is fact," said Jayson Kline, vice president and general manager of Bachus & Stratton. "We began buying Treasury bonds because we could see shifts in the market. Last night gave us a hint that war was going to be strong in our favor and end quickly."

Thanks to modern technology and night trading now at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Kline said buying up U.S. Treasury bond futures contracts was not only a safeguard against the falling prices in oil and gold but turned out to be most profitable.

News accounts of the successful U.S. attack on Iraq sent bond prices soaring and interest rates tumbling in the credit markets on Thursday. At the same time, oil and gold prices plunged.

South Florida brokers and traders, many of whom had worked throughout the night monitoring world markets, had a hectic day Thursday responding to clients' trade orders.

"We saw it coming through the night," Kline said. "And we could see today's flight to quality stocks."

Yet no one anticipated the unbridled euphoria on Wall Street.

"It was a real Americana effect," said Bill McCormick, assistant branch manager for Prudential-Bache Securities in Fort Lauderdale. "The high volume was most surprising."

"We've been totally backed up. We've got more than 250 orders, and there's a lot of buying," Schieman said. "If you're a gambler, you jump on something like this."

Meanwhile, traders and investors strolled in throughout the day to watch the electronic ticker tape and to check their bets. And with the Dow Jones industrial average up about 75 points at midmorning, several said they were making money.

"It was a no-lose situation," Patrick Musella said of his decision to get into the stock market back in August when Iraq invaded Kuwait.

"I thought that if Saddam pulled out, the market would go up, and if he was forced out by the U.S., it would go up," he said.

And Ron Laesser, who sold "almost everything I had" in his portfolio in December, partly for tax purposes, said that he still hung on to his Pepsi and Coca-Cola stock. Both issues jumped about $2 a share in trading on Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange.

"I anticipated the market going up if this thing was resolved. And the attack resolved the uncertainty" of whether the United States was going to war, he said.

Yet Howard Guggenheim, first vice president and manager of Smith Barney Harris Upham in Boca Raton, said he didn't think the small investor had returned to the market. Like others, Guggenheim thinks the large amount of trading on the exchanges is from large instituitional investors like mutual fund managers.

"We're telling our clients to take a cautionary approach. If they get back into stocks, make sure it's blue chip and stay on top of the market," Guggenheim said. "Yes, the optimism was nice to see. But that's one event. We're still in a recession. We don't know yet if it's a reversal of the bear market or a one-day rally."